Thrive: How Schools Will Win the Education Revolution

Become an irresistible school  Our rapidly evolving world is dramatically impacting how we view schools. Fortunately, we have the knowledge to not only survive, but thrive during rapid change. Other organizations have faced these evolutionary disruptions for centuries. Thrive: How Schools Will Win the Education Revolution translates this knowledge for educators. Written by Grant Lichtman, a thought leader on the transformation of education, this book will help administrators understand: • The most important concepts in creating long-term success: value, strategy, and innovation  • The Five Big Tools of strategic change, to build both a comfort and capacity for change   • The reality of competing in an evolving marketplace  Families are choosing from a growing menu of learning options. Your school needs a value proposition that shouts, "We are your best choice!" As an educator, you have an important role to play in winning the education revolution and making your school irresistible to your community.  

Table of Contents:
List of Figures Foreword Yong Zhao Acknowledgments About the Author Introduction SECTION I. THE ROAD TO “THRIVE”: VALUE, STRATEGY, INNOVATION 1. A Few Big Guide Rails 2. Your School’s Value Proposition 3. What Is Strategy? 4. Innovation: The Link Between Value and Strategy 5. Shifting From Strategic Planning to Strategic Design SECTION II. THE FIVE BIG TOOLS OF STRATEGIC CHANGE FOR SCHOOLS 6. Big Tool #1 : Kotter(+)—Key Steps to Effectively Changing Schools 7. Big Tool #2: Design-Based Practice 8. Big Tool #3: The Time-Tested Logic Model 9. Big Tool #4: The School Innovation Stairway 10. Big Tool #5: Understanding the School System SECTION III. START BUILDING 11. Finding the Values of Your School Community 12. Do You Know the Jobs Your School Is Hired to Do? 13. Lead Like an Architect 14. Finding Your School’s North Star 15. Building Cultures of Innovation in Schools 16. Learning from Other Successful Organizations 17. Measuring Innovation 18. Inevitable Obstacles 19. Pushing Our Horizons Appendix I. Activities for Your Teams Appendix II. Schools, Networks, Conferences and Book Suggestions to Help Discover “The Possible” References Index

About the Author :
Grant Lichtman is an internationally recognized thought leader in the drive to transform K-12 education.  He speaks, writes, and works with fellow educators to build capacity and comfort with innovation in response to a rapidly changing world. Since 2012, he has worked with nearly 200 school and community teams in both public and private schools, helping them to develop their imagination of schools of the future, and their places in that future. He is the author of three previous books, Moving the Rock: Seven Levers WE Can Press to Change Education; #EdJourney: A Roadmap to the Future of Education; and The Falconer: What We Wish We Had Learned in School. For fifteen years Grant was a senior administrator at one of the largest and oldest K-12 independent schools in California with responsibilities that included business, finance, operations, technology, development, campus construction, and global studies.  Before working in education, he directed business ventures in the oil and gas industry in the former Soviet Union, South America, and the U.S. Gulf Coast. He worked close to center stage in the economic and political transformation of the USSR, the end of the Cold War, and the historic opening of that communist-dominated economy to the outside world. Grant graduated from Stanford University with a BS and MS in geology in 1980 and studied the deep ocean basins of the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans and the Bering Sea. He and his wife, Julie, live in Poway, California. They have two grown children, Josh and Cassidy, who are doing great things to help improve our world.

Review :
Imagine you are climbing a mountain with a large group of people. Hard challenges lie ahead.Now imagine that you have the wisest and most capable, ingenious, clever, and informed trail guide you’ve ever met at your side, helping you plan and execute your climb. You feel better,don’t you? If your "mountain-climb" is redesigning a school to serve students in this vastly challenging world, Grant Lichtman is that guide and this book is your trail map. Don’t begin your climb without it. It’s not enough to build some "new model of education." Change happens faster today than at any other time in history. What we need in education is a cultural and organizational shift that matches the intensity of the future we face. We need a culture of innovation and iteration, where we constantly build, launch, measure, and iterate the best learning and teaching practices we create. In this book, Grant Lichtman has laid out the exact future our schools face and what schools need to do to face this future head on. More than ever, we need a culture of innovation and iteration in our schools, and this book provides you with the tools you need to build and maintain a culture of innovation. Every school leader needs to read this book and use the tools to transform their schools to help students build the knowledge, skills, and abilities to take on the dramatic future they face! Grant Lichtman shares another outstanding book for school leaders, with clear, actionable ideas about how we can get our school organizations to thrive. This is a must-read for administrator and community-group book studies. In Thrive, Grant Lichtman helps us understand that education is at a crossroads in our world. So that our schools do not go the way of the dinosaurs, he lays out the tools we need to manage strategic change and evolve our school systems to meet both the changing needs of our students and the changing demands of our society. Grant Lichtman has done it again, this time setting the stage for one of the most important books for school leaders in our time. Lichtman provides insights and actionable tools for school leaders to navigate the dramatically changing future and role of schools to keep up in the era of school choice and to find relevance in a rapidly changing world. As a principal, this is exactly the type of book our colleagues have been waiting for! As our society changes, so must our schools. Grant Lichtman has written a necessary book to help  schools to develop their road maps to becoming more modern, more relevant, and more powerful places for all who inhabit them.   In Thrive, Grant Lichtman brings together the best minds in education, business, research, history, philosophy, and also the futurists for a dynamic dialogue about "what is possible."  If you want to find out what "winning" looks like in school innovation, there isn’t a better collection of  actual resources or real-time examples than right here! Thank you for making your journey available to all of us Grant!   Once again, Grant Lichtman uses the power of the keyboard to provoke teachers, school leaders, and policymakers to think differently about schools and, most important, student learning. Thrive left me feeling optimistic about what the future of school can be for all students— regardless of school type or zip code—with some easy "next day" strategies alongside some difficult strategic choices that all schools will need, not just to survive but also to thrive in the future. Grant Lichtman has written a powerful book that will help any district or system start to make change. This book will challenge your thinking in a good way. Grant breaks the book down into three sections that help make the material easy to understand. Each section has meaningful tools to help school leaders start to implement changes to impact their students. This should be a book used at the university level to inspire future leaders to enter this profession with a changed mindset. This book comprises the magic trifecta of inspiration, practicality, and a kick in the pants when needed! If you are designing and implementing transformative change in your school, this book is your indispensable source for big ideas, practical tools, and heartfelt inspiration.